Canoodling
by GhostOfBambi
Summary: Written as part of a word war writing challenge - a little snapshot into the lives of two ordinary teenage Gryffindors, in which nothing much happens and people get hugged.


**Author's Note: I wrote this as part of a word war - I had forty minutes to write as much as possible and this is the final, unedited, and rather dull result. However, a couple of people on Tumblr liked it, so I decided to post it anyway.**

**Canoodling**

"I'm bored," said James Potter, lolling idly on the sofa in front of the fire.

"Nobody cares," said Sirius Black, who was lying on the rug.

"Up yours," James retorted, and frowned at the ceiling. "Wormtail cares."

"Peter's not here," said Sirius. James gave a snort of derision.

"Yeah, well," he replied. "If he _was_ here, he _would_ care."

"Where is he, anyway?" said Sirius, lifting his head from the floor a fraction in order to take a quick sweep of the room, though his view was much obstructed by the various armchairs, tables and sofas that stood in his way.

"I dunno. Detention, maybe?"

"I don't think Wormtail's had a detention for a while."

"Heh." James closed his eyes behind his glasses. "Who knows, then?"

"Moony might."

"I'm bored, though."

"Go do something interesting, then, and stop moaning about it."

"You're a shit best mate."

"You're a shit human being."

"You're a shit."

"A shit what?"

"Nothing," James clarified. "An actual shit. An actual, smelly, steaming pile of excrement."

"Touching sentiment," said Sirius. "Stop it, I might get a big head."

"Other people have to sit here too, you know," came a voice from above James's head. He opened his eyes to see Lily Evans leaning over the sofa, her long hair falling about her face like a swishy ginger curtain. He smiled to himself, and reached up to take a thick strand of it between his fingers and give it a tug.

"Ouch," said Lily tonelessly.

"I'm bored, Evans," said James, with a winning smile. "How about we ditch Sirius and have a nice canoodle by the fire?"

"_Ooooh, canooooodle_," said Sirius. "James learned a new word."

"I'd rather, ahem, canoodle with Flitwick," said Lily stonily. "So no, no thank you."

"Why Flitwick?" said James, feigning upset. "What's he got that I don't?"

"Rugged manliness," Lily replied. "Move over, I want to sit down."

James obliged, sitting up immediately and moving over on the sofa to give Lily room to sit next to him. She did so, and he immediately loped an arm around her shoulders.

"Inappropriate physical contact, Potter," said Lily, making no attempt to divest herself of the arm that had draped itself around her without her permission. She had brought a book with her, James noticed, and had already opened it to a marked page.

"Lily, Lily, Lily, I'm just being a friend," said James. "Friends can touch each another inappropriately."

"Do you and Sirius touch one another inappropriately?" said Lily, although the majority of her attention was captured by whatever she was reading. Sirius snorted from the rug, amused.

"Sirius is all cold and emotionless," said James, pouting. "He doesn't let me touch him inappropriately."

"You poor thing," said Lily, idly flipping a page. "Deprived of all this affection. Is that why you touch yourself so often?"

"Excuse me?" James's eyebrows shot up in alarm. "Who says I touch myself 'so often'?"

"Every time you start humming the William Tell Overture to yourself, which is an almost daily occurrence," explained Lily, whilst frowning slightly at her book, as though she were deeply enraptured by the words on the page. "You immediately go up to your dorm and have a wank afterwards."

"What the – how do you know that?" James yelped, jumping away from Lily as if she had burned him. She looked up from her book to give him an amused once over.

"Sirius told me," she said simply.

"Sirius! You fucking bastard, I'll -" Alas, much to James's shock and dismay, Sirius had discreetly gotten up and left his spot by the fire at Lily's revelation. James stood up immediately, looking around wildly for his best friend, but he wasn't in the room.

"I'll kill him," he said viciously, and in his mind came the satisfying mental image of his best friend writhing in pain on the ground after being handed a well-deserved hex to the nuts, courtesy of James Potter, Gryffindor Quidditch Captain and Famous Ladies Man extraordinaire. Except he wasn't a famous ladies man, merely a man, who mostly had really bad luck with the ladies. He felt something tug on his sleeve and looked down. Lily was looking up at him with bright, expectant eyes, and she was smiling.

"Sit down and don't worry about it," she said, and gave his sleeve another tug. "I only knew because I'm terribly fascinated by your masturbatory habits, and begged Sirius for information on the matter."

James blinked. "Did you really?"

"No," she said flatly, and closed her book. "But sit down anyway, and keep me company. It's nearly the weekend, and I'm sick of reading. Put your arm around me again, too, it was rather comfortable."

"Don't tell me what to do, woman," said James, crossly, although he wasn't really cross at all.

"Fine, then," said Lily, with a shrug. "Don't put your arm around me, if you'd rather not."

"Oh, no, I rather would," said James quickly, and promptly plonked himself back down on the sofa beside the pretty redhead. His arm resumed its place around her slim shoulders. "Thought you didn't want to canoodle with me?"

"That depends entirely on your definition of canoodling," Lily replied. "Besides, who said I didn't want to?"

"You said you'd rather canoodle with –"

"With Flitwick, yeah, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to canoodle with you. Maybe I just really fancy Flitwick. You wouldn't know."

"Do you fancy Flitwick?"

"Well, obviously," she replied, rolling her eyes. "Proper hunk of man, that one."

"Does that mean you also fancy me?"

"No," she said. "It doesn't."

"But you're canoodling with me," he pointed out. "And I think we both know that you're not the kind of girl who'd canoodle with just about anyone."

"Stop saying canoodle, it's getting annoying."

"_You're_ getting annoying," he retorted childishly.

"Shut up, or I won't fancy you anymore."

"Thought you said you didn't."

"I lied."

"Knew it!"

"Well, look who's a genius," said Lily, snuggling further into James's embrace. "Tell me, what first alerted you to this shocking new information?"

"Oh, I'm an expert in body language," he said.

"Mmmm," Lily murmured, whether in agreement or not, it was difficult to tell.

"I could tell by the way your face flushed when you leaned over the sofa," he said, adopting what he presumed to be a low and sensual tone. "By the way your eyes sparkled when I said your name, the way your body stiffened when I held you in my arms."

"Huh."

"Also, you've been going out with me since October."

"Damn," she said, lightly slapping his knee. "I should've known that'd give me away."


End file.
